Game of Thrones (TV series)

Game of Thrones is an American fantasy television series produced by the HBO cable network. It is based on the novel series A Song of Ice and Fire, written by George R.R. Martin who serves as a producer, creative consultant and scriptwriter on the television series. David Benioff and D.B. Weiss created the television series and serve as executive producers, showrunners and the main writers.

To date, the series consists of five transmitted seasons comprising fifty episodes in total. A further season has been commissioned,[1] taking the show up to a sixth year/season.

Production of the series is based in Belfast, Northern Ireland, mainly at the Paint Hall Studios. It is the largest and most expensive television production ever mounted in Northern Ireland. Filming for the series has also been conducted in Malta, Iceland, Croatia, Morocco, Spain, and the USA.

See the production timeline for a more detailed history of the show's development and production.

David Benioff was sent a collection of the first four novels in the series (A Game of Thrones, A Clash of Kings, A Storm of Swords and A Feast for Crows) by George R.R. Martin's agent. Initially sceptical of the fantasy genre, Benioff became a big fan of the books and invited his friend D.B. Weiss to develop the project with him for a screen adaptation. They initially considered a movie adaption, but realized this would mean losing most of the plot and characters from the books. Instead, they began working on an adaptation for television. They met with George R.R. Martin and spent several hours discussing the project. Martin was impressed with their enthusiasm and that they had already worked out the resolutions to several key mysteries in the books. He agreed with them that the series was a good fit for the cable company HBO, which Martin was already a big fan of.

HBO agreed to option the project in 2007 and active development of a pilot script began. However, this was delayed by the 2007–2008 Writers Guild of America strike. In October 2008 HBO exercised its option to buy the rights to the series and ordered a pilot episode a few weeks later. Casting announcements were made throughout 2009, with Peter Dinklage the first actor formally announced for the series. The pilot episode was filmed in Northern Ireland and Morocco in October and November 2009.

HBO officially greenlit the series on 2 March 2010. Filming of Season 1 began on 23 July, with Malta replacing Morocco for overseas filming. Several actors from the pilot were recast, requiring the re-filming of most of the first episode. The season wrapped filming on 15 December. HBO later confirmed that the first season had a budget of $60 million. The first season aired on HBO on 17 April-19 June 2011, garnering critical acclaim and steadily rising ratings. HBO confirmed after the transmission of the first episode that a second season had been commissioned.

Production of Season 2 began on 25 July 2011 and wrapped on 12 December. Malta was dropped as a filming location, replaced by Croatia, while additional filming took place in Iceland. The budget for Season 2 was 15% higher than Season 1, necessitated by the addition more ambitious effects sequences and the use of CGI creatures such as direwolves and dragons. The second season aired from 1 April to 3 June 2012, garnering additional critical acclaim and increased ratings. By the end of the second season, the show had become the third-most-successful series in HBO's history, behind only The Sopranos and True Blood. In addition, the DVD and Blu-ray set of Season 1 was released just prior to transmission of Season 2 and immediately became HBO's fastest-selling media release in its history.

Production of Season 3 began on 10 July 2012 and wrapped on 24 November. Morocco was added to the filming roster alongside Croatia, Iceland and Northern Ireland, with the complexities of filming requiring the addition of a third filming unit to the existing two. An additional scene was shot in Los Angeles for safety reasons, meaning that Season 3 was filmed in five separate countries on three continents. The season aired from 31 March to 2 June 2013. The penultimate episode The Rains of Castamere won widespread critical acclaim for its shock twist ending. By the end of the season the show had supplanted True Blood as the second-most successful HBO show in the United States and The Sopranos as its most successful series worldwide.

Production of Season 4 began on 8 July 2013 and concluded on 21 November. Production was more focused this season, with only two units used and filming restricted to Northern Ireland, Iceland and Croatia. This was to allow more of the budget to be concentrated on several major action and effects sequences late in the season.

Production of Season 5 ran from 18 July to 12 December. Production was focused once more, with two units filming in Northern Ireland, Croatia and Spain, with Spain being a new addition to the show's shooting countries.

One further seasons has been commissioned,[2] taking the show up to a sixth year.

Future seasons, and catching up with the books

The initial plan

It is generally projected that the TV series will last seven or eight seasons, but no one is entirely sure.

As of 2014, five books have been published in the A Song of Ice and Fire series, and author George R.R. Martin has predicted that there will be two more (though he is struggling not to let the final book run long, in which case it would have to be split, for a total of eight books).

The third novel, A Storm of Swords, was so long that it pushed the limits of how large a published book could physically be without pages falling out. Because the third novel was so long, the production team realized it would be impossible to condense it all into a single season, so the decision was made to adapt its contents across two seasons. While Season 3 ends with the Red Wedding, this actually happened in the middle of the third novel (similar to how Renly Baratheon suddenly died in the middle of Season 2). Jon Snow returned to Castle Black by the middle of the third novel. Daenerys Targaryen had not yet reached Meereen by the middle of the third novel. A few characters did advance further than this in Season 3, i.e. Bran Stark actually passed north of the Wall at the end of the third novel (he had so few chapters in the entire book that the TV producers didn't want to space it out for two full seasons).

As a result, while there are projected to be seven novels, splitting the third novel into two seasons should mean that the TV series will end with Season 8. Even so the producers have never been sure about this, and often simply gave the figure of "seven or eight" seasons.

Seasons 5: Intercutting the fourth and fifth novels

What was originally planned as the fourth novel was even longer than the third novel, so Martin split it into two novels: A Feast for Crows (the fourth book) and A Dance with Dragons (the fifth book). The fourth and fifth books occur during a simultaneous timeframe: all of the chapters set in the Seven Kingdoms were moved to the fourth book, while all chapters set outside of the Seven Kingdoms (at the Wall or across the Narrow Sea in Essos) were moved to the fifth book. Though of course, despite splitting them because as one book they would have been longer than the third novel, Martin kept making additions to the fourth and fifth novels during the writing process, so both are nearly as long as the third novel.

It would be odd to spend an entire season with one set of characters while the rest do not appear, then reverse this in the subsequent season. So the TV series's plan is that Seasons 5 will chronologically present events in the order that they happened. This is comparable to how J.R.R. Tolkien's The Two Towers actually consisted of two halves: the first half entirely follows Aragorn since the end of the first novel, then the second half backs up in time to follow only Frodo's perspective, but during the same timeframe since the end of the first novel. Peter Jackson's movie adaptation, however, chose to simply intercut between the two storylines to show events in the chronological order in which they occurred. Thus "Season 5" will consist of the majority of the material from A Feast for Crows and A Dance with Dragons.

Future of the show: How many seasons?

Given that there are currently five novels (with the third split into two seasons), but given the fact that the majority of the last two novels will be adapted in season 5, there is currently only enough print material to adapt through the end of Season 5 (for most storylines). Even so, Martin has told producers Benioff & Weiss the general outline of how the final two books are going to progress (so if a bolt of lightning strikes Martin, they'd still be able to finish according to Martin's general plan).

During Season 3, in an interview with Mother Jones magazine, Benioff & Weiss said that they thought the TV series might run as many as eight seasons, for a total of 80 episodes, though they were unsure:

Mother Jones: "So I gather that Game of Thrones could last eight or nine seasons. Does that mean putting novel writing on hold for a decade?

Benioff & Weiss: "Yes, if we live that long and HBO keeps wanting to make the show. We have the opportunity here to tell a coherent story that lasts for 80 hours. And while a canvas of that size presents all sorts of storytelling problems, it also allows us to spend more time with these characters we love than we'll ever get again.[3]

Soon before Season 4 began, however, in early March 2014 executive producers David Benioff and Dan Weiss made several comments that they actually felt Season 4 was the "midway point" of the TV series, which would probably last seven seasons. On March 11, 2014, they said in Entertainment Weekly:

"It feels like this is the midpoint for us...If we’re going to go seven seasons, which is the plan, Season 4 is right down the middle, the pivot point...I would say it's the goal we've had from the beginning...It was our unstated goal, because to start on a show and say your goal is seven seasons is the height of lunacy. Once we got to the point where we felt like we're going to be able to tell this tale to its conclusion, that became [an even clearer] goal. Seven gods, seven kingdoms, seven seasons. It feels right to us.”[4]

The repeated statements Benioff and Weiss made throughout Season 4 that they "always" intended for there to be seven seasons simply contradict previous statements they made in formal print interviews, such as with Mother Jones in 2013 (though plans can and do change over many years).

Benioff & Weiss, as well as George R.R. Martin himself, then provided comments for the April 2014 issue of Vanity Fair (which was released about two weeks after Benioff and Weiss said in Entertainment Weekly that there might be only seven seasons). Contradicting his statements made at the same time in EW that "we're going for seven seasons, it's been our goal since the beginning", Benioff instead repeated that the production team wasn't sure if the TV series would last "seven or eight" seasons.

"If we're a series and we're four seasons, five seasons in, and it's indefinite as to how long it's gonna go, then I don't think there’s as much pressure as far as, the end is coming, the end is nigh. So, for us, whether it ends up being seven or eight, it's right around there. I think we've always felt — we just completed the fourth season — this is the midpoint. And we're coming around the bend right now."[5]

D.B. Weiss also said in Vanity Fair, after they had just finished Season 4 and were about to start writing Season 5, that they saw the show as running up to eight seasons:

"We know there’s an end somewhere in the seven-or-eight season zone. It’s not something that goes ten, eleven — it doesn't just keep on going because it can. I think the desire to milk more out of it is what would eventually kill it, if we gave in to that.[6]

Elio and Linda of Westeros.org analyzed these conflicting statements before Season 5 began, and offered an explanation: most TV series do not make their starring cast members sign contracts which last longer than six years. If a TV show is successful enough that it lasts longer than six years, the starring cast members can renegotiate their contracts - and because the show is now a guaranteed hit, their pay can increase drastically. A starring cast member on a longrunning and popular TV series can easily leave the show after the sixth season and enter into a lucrative film career, being paid millions of dollars instead of the several hundred thousand that a TV series can easily afford to pay them in the same time period. A hit TV series might be popular enough and generate enough revenue to sustain this - but the Game of Thrones producers have no way of completely guaranteeing that the TV series's ratings will be as high three seasons in the future.

As a result, in Season 4 the executive producers started backtracking and saying that they had always intended for only seven seasons, because they were in heavy contract negotiations between the starring cast and HBO. Now unsure if they would have more than seven seasons (even though they had previously said they felt they needed at least eight to tell the story in full), they didn't want to promise more than they could confirm.

Westeros.org therefore theorized that going into Season 5, the writers were adapting to a "worst case scenario mode" for the event that they only had seven seasons. This included drastically cutting several major subplots from the novels, such as omitting House Greyjoy's subplots almost entirely, not making mention of Doran Martell's other children (including his daughter and heir, Arianne), and cutting out many major characters that appear in Tyrion's storyline in the Free Cities. They went on to speculate, however, that once Season 5 had finished production, the TV writers would probably know how the cast contract negotiations worked out, and if it was indeed confirmed that they would get more than seven seasons, they would then restructure accordingly - i.e. not omitting these storylines, but pushing them back to Season 6.[7]

As events unfolded, it was announced in October 2014 that HBO was indeed able to reach a settlement with the starring cast members: based on the unprecedented and continued success of the TV series, HBO agreed to give them all major pay raises. Part of this involved instituting a pay-grade system: while it a large ensemble cast, a few cast members who can arguably be called the core cast. These "Tier A" cast members as they called them were Peter Dinklage (Tyrion Lannister), Lena Headey (Cersei Lannister), Nikolaj Coster-Waldau (Jaime Lannister), Kit Harington (Jon Snow), and Emilia Clarke (Daenerys Targaryen).[8]Maisie Williams (Arya Stark) and Sophie Turner (Sansa Stark) are not in the Tier A cast - it is possible they aren't paid as much due to being underaged. A later interview with Entertainment Weekly in March 2015 reported that for Season 5, the Tier A cast members were each paid $300,000 per episode.[9]

As predicted, with these cast contract renegotiations settled, HBO and the writers began intimating that the TV series could run for more than seven seasons. In the same Entertainment Weekly interview, HBO programming president Michael Lombardo said that the network would eagerly accept the TV series going on for eight to ten seasons, but only if writers Benioff and Weiss felt it served the story instead of dragging it out (though of course, the TV series has not been "padding" the massive novels series, but omitting many subplots for time). Lombardo said:

"We'll have an honest conversation that explores all possible avenues. If they [Benioff and Weiss] weren't comfortable going beyond seven seasons, I trust them implicitly and trust that's the right decision—as horrifying as that is to me. What I'm not going to do is have a show continue past where the creators believe where they feel they've finished with the story.[10]

Therefore, now that the crunch of the cast contract renegotiations in Season 5 is over, it seems that HBO is adopting more of a "wait and see" attitude, and while unlikely, they no longer dismiss out of hand the possibility of the show running for ten seasons. This also might mean that plotlines that were omitted in Season 5 will somehow be reintegrated back into Season 6.

Westeros.org, WatchersOnTheWall.com, and Entertainment Weekly all agreed, however, that what increasingly seems most probable is that like other major TV series such as Mad Men, Game of Thrones will probably end with a "double-sized" seventh season, which is then split into two halves and aired a year apart (i.e. 16 episodes instead of 10, broken into two 8 episode blocks). This would functionally result in the TV series getting "eight seasons", though for purposes of prohibitively expensive cast contract negotiations, it technically wouldn't count as another full season.

Benioff and Weiss also noted in the March 2015 Entertainmenet Weekly interview that the pay issue has largely been solved after successful negotiations, and the series continues to bring in revenue with high ratings, but the major issue they deal with now is the time issue: Game of Thrones is one of the largest TV productions in history, spanning multiple countries with different units filming simultaneously, and the shooting schedule for Season 5 officially lasted a massive 202 days. As they have said before, they physically cannot hope to produce more than 10 episodes at such high quality in a single year, and the scale keeps increasing, with an ever-expanding cast and new set locations. As Weiss said:

"The money issue was largely supplanted by the time issue. There’s still the money issue; since television budgets are not movie budgets, you’re always making Sophie’s choices in terms of visual effects. We ran up against the absolute limit of how many days we can shoot in a year."[11]

On July 30, 2015, HBO programming president Michael Lombardo announced that the TV series will last at least eight seasons, not only seven. Speaking at the Television Critics Association press tour, Lombardo said that while Season 7 was not yet technically ordered, HBO and the writing team felt that there were about two more seasons worth of story (matching the expectation that it is based on a series of seven novels, one of which was so large it was split and adapted as two TV seasons). In contrast with Benioff and Weiss's frequent declarations since Season 4 that they had "always" intended for there to be seven TV seasons (though they had repeatedly said "seven or eight" before Season 4), Lombardo said that "Seven-seasons-and-out has never been the [internal] conversation" between the production team and HBO. Lombardo said,

"The question is: How much beyond seven are we going to do? Obviously we’re shooting six now, hopefully discussing seven. [Showrunners David Benioff and Dan Weiss are] feel like there’s two more years after six. I would always love for them to change their minds, but that’s what we’re looking at right now."[12]

Lombardo also directly reiterated that HBO is interested in making prequel projects, adapted from Martin's other stories set in Westeros, i.e. the Tales of Dunk and Egg - but he also reiterated that they aren't going to have any serious negotiations about prequel projects until after the main TV series is over, due to the massive amount of work involved.

Catching up with the books

George R.R. Martin himself, in the same April 2014 issue of Vanity Fair, addressed the major and related question which is frequently asked: what will happen if the TV series outpaces the remaining books? What if Martin cannot finish the next novel (the sixth, The Winds of Winter) before Season 6 has to enter production?

Martin stated that while he is trying to focus on writing the remaining novels, he is opposed to rushing them to finish to match the TV series, given that he wants his novels to stand the test of time for decades, like J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings. Thus while Martin is hurrying, he has accepted that it a real possibility that he cannot finish the next two novels in time.

Martin declined writing an episode for Season 5 to focus on writing The Winds of Winter, and in March 2015 canceled all of his future convention appearances to focus on writing it. Even so, it now appears all but certain that at least the final season of the TV series will probably be released before the final novel, A Dream of Spring.[13]

Casting

With 250 speaking roles, almost 90 of them named, the cast was the largest ever assembled for the debut season of a HBO project. The cast grew even larger in the second and third seasons.

Premise

The series is set on a world where the seasons can last for years at a time. The main setting is the continent of Westeros, which was home to seven feuding kingdoms until they were united by the Targaryen family using dragons some three centuries ago. The dragons died out and the Targaryen Mad King was unseated in a civil war led by Lords Robert Baratheon and Eddard Stark, seventeen years before the series opens. Robert has ruled as King ever since, but when the series opens his rule is increasingly undermined by other factions. At the same time, two surviving Targaryen children, having grown to adulthood in exile on the eastern continent of Essos, are now planning to return and retake the Iron Throne, and to this end are seeking a military alliance with other factions.

As both civil war and an external invasion threaten Westeros, another danger arises in the lands to the far north, beyond the vast Wall that forms the realm's northern border, where a supernatural threat believed to be mythical seems to be stirring after millennia of sleep. The only defense lies with the Night's Watch, an under-manned, under-funded order of soldiers once held in honor but now used as a dumping ground for criminals and exiles.

The Great Houses

Westeros is ruled by nine noble houses, who in turn command hundreds of lesser vassal houses. Each of the Great Houses rules a large region and commands significant armies and power in their own right. A list of the Great Houses and some of their more significant vassals follows:

House Tyrell of Highgarden: rulers of the Reach, a vast, fertile region in the south of Westeros. The most populous region of the continent and able to field the largest armies. Led by Lord Mace Tyrell.

House Martell of Sunspear: rulers of Dorne, the southern-most region of the continent. Separated from the rest of Westeros by extensive mountains and a sea, the Dornish mostly keep to themselves. Led by Prince Doran Martell.

In an interview with New York Observer just before Season 5 began, Bryan Cogman explained the writing process for the TV series:

"It’s varied from season to season as we figured out how this thing works. But it’s basically run the same way the past few years. As we’re shooting one season we’re trading emails and/or chatting on set about the broad strokes of the next season: ”Character X” starts at “blank” and we want him or her to end up at “blank.” Then, as we start to approach the end of production, David and Dan, in some years, will assign the various writers a few characters. For instance, when we were working on Season 4, I was assigned Arya and a few others. So I’d go home and work for a few weeks on my “Arya Season 4,” keeping in mind a few scenes we’d already discussed and what chapters and scenarios and themes from the books we might use.

Then, in January, when we’re back in L.A., we’d meet for about two or three weeks, armed with the work we’d all done individually, and throw it all up on the board. You debate, you use some stuff, you throw some stuff out, you think up some new stuff. Sometimes what you end up with is really close to the individual outlines. Sometimes it's very different.

After we map out all the main characters’ individual arcs, using color-coded index cards, we arrange them by episode and get a rough idea of the scene order. From there, we all split up again and each tackle a chunk of the outline—a detailed outline, which sometimes ends up being over a hundred pages. David and Dan polish it, and that’s what we use to script our episodes. I’m generally assigned mid-season episodes—it just seems to work out that way. George wrote a script per season for the first four seasons, but took a break for Season 5 as he’s hard at work on the next book. And while George isn't in the writers room, he reads the outlines and gives his notes.

From there I write my two scripts—it takes me about a month and half to do both—D&D read them, give notes, I do a rewrite, D&D sometimes do a pass on it themselves. And we continue to tinker with all of the scripts through prep and production. But they’re generally camera-ready when we finish them. They have to be, as we have to have all 10 scripts complete well before shooting starts. We shoot all 10 episodes simultaneously, out of order, like a big, 10-hour movie, with two shooting units going at all times, sometimes in different countries."[14]

Cogman went on to explain that, as of Season 5, there were never more than four people in the writers' room at any one time. Martin didn't actually sit in the writers room even when he wrote one episode each year in Seasons 1 to 3 (he didn't move to Northern Ireland to oversee filming for months at a time the way they did), though they sent him their outlines and he would send them back with notes. In Season 1 the only three people sitting in the writers' room and discussing the scripts were Benioff, Weiss, and Cogman. Jane Espenson wrote one episode in Season 1, but as she has explained, they gave her a copy of the book filled with stick-it notes and strict instructions to adapt a certain page range - but she was not actively contributing on the rest of the season as a whole, and left after Season 1. In Season 2 Vanessa Taylor joined the show and became the fourth person (and only woman) sitting in the writer's room discussions. Taylor stayed through Season 3 but did not return for Season 4, and in Season 5 assistant Dave Hill was promoted up to be a new full staff writer, bringing the number of people in the room back up to four. Cogman said that he felt having such a small number of writers helped keep the show more focused.[15]

Filming dates

The pilot was originally expected to be filmed between 12 October and 6 November 2009, but there was a two-week delay in pre-production. A read-through of the script was held on 12 October 2009. Production and on-location rehearsals began on 24 October. Filming commenced on 26 October and concluded on 19 November.

Scenes at Doune Castle were filmed on 26–27 October 2009 and are believed to include the Winterfell feast to celebrate King Robert's visit. Some filming was also done in the courtyard.

The prologue was filmed on 29 October 2009 at Tollymore Forest Park.

Filming at Cairncastle took place on 2 November 2009, including the scene of Gared's execution and finding the dead direwolf in the snow.

Filming of the scene between Ros, Tyrion and Jaime in King's Landing was filmed on or prior to 3 November 2009, possibly at the Paint Hall studios.

Filming at Castle Ward took place on 5 November 2009, including the scenes of Tommen and Bran sparring and Sandor and Joffrey insulting Rodrik and Robb.

The UK filming bloc was expected to last for 18 days, suggesting that it would finish around 12 November 2009. George R.R. Martin confirmed on his blog that after this date production would move to Morocco for the remainder of the shoot.

Daenerys and Khal Drogo's wedding was filmed on 16 November 2009.

Production of the rest of Season 1, including reshoots on the pilot, commenced on 23 July 2010 and ran through 18 December 2010. Filming took place in Northern Ireland and Malta.

Production of Season 2 ran from 25 July 2011 to 12 December 2011. Filming took place in Northern Ireland, Iceland and Croatia (replacing Malta).

Production of Season 3 ran from 10 July to 24 November 2012, with Morocco added to the filming roster. An additional scene was also shot in Los Angeles, meaning that filming for Season 3 took place in five countries and on three continents.

Production of Season 4 ran from 8 July to 21 November 2013. Filming took place in Northern Ireland, Iceland and Croatia, with Morocco dropped. Filming in Iceland was expanded to encompass locations in the south of Westeros as well as beyond the Wall, and took place earlier in the schedule to allow for more filming time.

Production of Season 5 ran from 18 July to 12 December 2014, with Spain added to the filming roster. Filming also took place in Northern Ireland and Croatie, with Iceland dropped. Additional shooting took place in Canada for the scenes involving the direwolf Ghost.

External links

WatchersOnTheWall.com - a fansite dedicated to covering all developments on the production as they happen.

Westeros.org - a subset of the Westeros.org website which covers developments on the series.